Israeli Election Circus 2019, Act 3: Too Cute by Half

Hi there! I had a different draft going for Act 3, but as usual in I-P and in particular during election season, the crazy events run way ahead of everyone. So… first a quick news flash:

The banning of a major Arab List (and the other major Arab List’s leading Jewish candidate) by the kangaroo forum a.k.a. the Central Election Committee (CEC), as described in Act 2, was overturned by Israel’s High Court in an 8-1 vote. Despite that court’s gradual packing with right-wing judges, the case was just too ridiculous. Thus far this century, the CEC banned Arab Lists in 5 out of 6 elections, and the court overturned all bans. On the same day, the court (reversing another Election Committee decision), banned a single candidate for the first time — the lead candidate for the almost-Neo-Nazi Kahanist party, whose pact with more mainstream far-right parties was orchestrated by Bibi himself, as described in Act 1. This throws a little wrench into that arranged wedding.

This Act will look inside the little shop of horrors that is the Israeli hard/far-right, a place where there can be such a thing as “mainstream far-right parties”. There are 3 major Lists in that circus this year, and the one with the Kahanists is actually the most boring and likely, the least dangerous. 

How so? See below the salmon-hue and the fold.

Since 1967, Israel has controlled the lives of the Palestinian people living in East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza, without giving them citizenship; the vast majority have been forced to live as stateless, rightless subjects under military rule. Even now, as Occupation-tolerant advocates often deny and discount this basic reality (or are shamefully ignorant of it), Israel controls the freedom of movement of these territories' residents, in particular their ability to go abroad and return; controls their residency status; their airspace, currency, water supply, fuel supply, most of their electricity, and their ability to import and export products. All the while, deeply exploiting their day labor and natural resources — and further controlling their social and intimate lives via a secret police that extorts an extensive network of collaborators. THIS IS A VERY PARTIAL LIST.

This Occupation regime has continued unabated for nearly 52 out of the Israeli parliament’s 70 years of existence, covering the last 14 out of Israel's 20 general elections. Apart from a couple of elections in the 1980s-90s, no major Israeli party has campaigned on ending it.

As long as this continues,  the Israeli elections cannot be considered really democratic. That said, one should never give up hope, and elections might open the door to the Law of Unintended Consequences, in a good way.

Besides, it’s one of the world's most entertaining electoral circuses. So I'm writing this series.          

Speechless

That’s how you will feel in a few lines… first, watch the 45-second clip below.

x xYouTube Video

In the punchline towards the end, the actress says “To me, it smells like democracy.”

Except it is no actress; this is Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s Minister of Trials (literal translation, it’s of course the Justice Ministry) and its fastest-rising political star, #2 and official co-leader of the new List “The New Right.” 

But what is she doing in a satirical clip?

This isn’t satire. It is an actual New Right campaign ad, trying to mimic the Western alt-right’s malignant sense of humor. To give it additional edge, they released it just before the Jewish holiday of Purim (analogous to Halloween, but happening on the same day as Hindu Holi and Iranian Norooz).

Incidentally, Purim also marks the 25th Jewish-calendar anniversary to the 1994 Hebron massacre of Muslim-Palestinian worshippers by a Jewish-Israeli settler— a massacre that has proven to be a turning point for the far worse in I-P history. That requires a completely separate diary, of course. But it’s a stark reminder as we ponder the antics of present-day Israel’s far right.

FellowTraveler wrote a diary about the “Fascism” ad yesterday, aptly named The Creepiest Campaign Video of the Israeli Elections. They have more background there on Shaked’s relentless campaign to subdue the High Court, the strongest element in Israel’s (rather weak) system of checks and balances.

So… you might have noticed Shaked is very good looking, and certainly knows how to use it (not my type though; the look in her eyes has always creeped me out). But what’s even more important, she is a secular gal from Tel Aviv, while the Israeli far-right’s base is overwhelmingly Orthodox.

The Srugim Base

Israel’s far-right originally revolved around the secular Herut (Liberty) party headed by PM-to-be Menachem Begin; it descended from the pre-1948 Irgun terror group. Over the years Herut gradually gentrified, in the 1960s forming a stable alliance with the larger Liberal party, who cared mostly about free markets and was more centrist on matters of state, and eventually forming Likud together. By the time Begin finally made it to the PM’s office in 1977, he and Likud were ripe for giving up all of Sinai, in explicit contradiction to their official party platform.

But meanwhile, the 1967 war caused a sea change in the Zionist Orthodox community, colloquially known as “Kipot Srugot” and now in short, they refer to themselves as “Srugim” (“Knitted”), after the men’s knitted yarmulkes. This movement has prided itself on combining the best of both worlds: retaining Orthodox faith and tradition, while playing a full role in the Zionist revolution and more generally in modern life (well, the latter up to a point).

As identity-group minorities often do, the “Knitted” have voted as a bloc, and their party — known from the 1950s through the 2000s as Mafdal — was a regular coalition partner to Labor’s seemingly eternal rule during the state’s first generation. There was some unease in that alliance due to stances on religion, but on matters of state Mafdal was rather centrist.

Then 1967 happened. Leading Zionist-Orthodox rabbis saw the victory as a sign from God. A messianic fervor took over the community’s youth, and has never let go to this very day. They spearheaded the settler movement. The post-1967 Labor governments built plenty of settlements of their own accord, but the Orthodox settler movement forced the government’s hand to settle more and more areas, by setting up mass encampments where they wanted settlements to be built, and relentless lobbying. This wasn’t some wild-eyed youth acting alone; I’ve heard firsthand, and read reports, about how entire religious high schools, with their head rabbis and school buses, went into the West Bank to join these encampments.

A right-wing line had also taken over Mafdal in 1977, forging a far stronger and more natural alliance with the new ruling party Likud. By the 1980s when the few relatively moderate old guard aged out, Mafdal became a bona fide far-right party. But by then they were already upstaged by even more extreme far-right parties. Those too, got nearly all their votes from the “Knitted” sector.

By contrast, non-Orthodox far-right parties have been more of a boom-and-bust affair. Master of incitement Avigdor Lieberman managed to drag a good chunk of former-USSR immigrants to vote for his “Israel our Home” party, but he’s now fallen out of their favor (they seem to prefer Likud, and some have likely drifted to center). Lieberman is forecast to miss the 3.25% threshold this time and fall out of parliament. Here’s hoping; good riddance.

Here’s a chart of the far-right parties’ trajectories over the years. When a party suddenly skips an election, it’s likely because it’s joined with someone (e.g., National Union and Israel Our Home in 2003; I was too lazy to draw the mergers).

Trajectory of far-right parties, 1977-2015. To be honest, Mafdal was fully far-right only from some point in the 1980s, but has been dominated by settlers and their allies from 1977 onwards. The Knesset has 120 seats.

The far right has had difficulties attracting and retaining substantial numbers of secular voters. Renaissance (born out of the opposition to peace with Egypt), Homeland (advocating the “voluntary” ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from I-P), and National Union (into which Homeland has merged) were all originally headed by secular celebrities, but eventually turned to the Orthodox vote because that’s what sustains this part of the political map. By 2013, all these had either gone extinct, or merged back with Mafdal/“Jewish Home”.

Boom and Bust?

Ayelet Shaked joined Jewish Home (the rebranding of Mafdal) in 2013, together with Naftali Bennett who immediately won the party leadership. Bennet, a high-tech multi-millionaire who speaks the Silicon Wadi lingo, and Shaked (who also worked in high tech before politics) have been a political power couple (they are not actually a couple) since the start of their political life in Bibi’s Byzantine court in the mid-2000s. In 2013 the two led an attempt to attract non-Orthodox voters to support what was still an Orthodox-dominated far-right party. Indeed, the Jewish Home List won 12 seats, a feat unseen since 1977 when Mafdal still had sole control of the Zionist-Orthodox vote. Much of that was thanks to the mergers and relative solidification of the same bloc; but there was likely some attraction of secular right-wingers.

But the novelty quickly wore off. Bennett in particular has turned out to be a rather ineffective minister and an irritating political figure, losing much of his appeal. He comes across as a classic Orthodox far-right boy who had been brainwashed in their insular education system. The way he approaches I-P has no appeal outside of those circles, despite a public sphere very receptive to right-wing crap. Jewish Home came down to 8 seats in 2015. And for the past 4 years he’s been education minister, a classic dead-end in Israeli politics. 

Meanwhile, on the home front Bennett and Shaked were reminded repeatedly that this is an Orthodox party, and every step they made to make it more amenable to non-Orthodox supporters was met with hostility. So by the start of the 2019 campaign they decided to gamble in classic Israeli high-tech fashion, that their personal brand is worth more than all of the Jewish Home conglomerate put together. In a surprise move they announced The New Right party.

The polls looked good for them initially, averaging almost 10 seats. But then reality set in. The main Zionist-Orthodox constituency has deep loyalty to Mafdal or whatever it’s called today. There’s no doubt many Mafdal/Jewish-Home voters are not even far-right, they just vote with their bloc. Why would they move to this new start-up? Not only is the New Right not sufficiently Orthodox, they also give off a definite whiff of out-of-touch elitism. The “Fascism” clip was filmed inside the mansion of their #3 candidate, yet another multi-millionaire.

The New Right now polls around 5-7 seats, but the direction has been down, there are still 3 weeks to go, and far-right parties notoriously underperform their polls come election time. Remember: if they fall below 4 seats, they’re out. And this year they have to compete not only with the Jewish Home (which is polling slightly higher), the Likud, and Lieberman, but also with a new even more extreme wild-card that is stealing everyone’s thunder (about him, in a future Circus Act).

Hence, the obscene “Fascism” ad. To me, it smells like Desperation: a vacuous move to grab attention and manufacture headlines. In the same vein, they came out this week with over-the-top aggressive statements against the court decision to allow the Arabs and ban the Kahanist. They even posted this ridiculous banner a few blocks away from the High court:

“Shaked will lord over the High court; Bennett will defeat Hamas.” 

What does this stupid slogan even mean? Is she going to make the High Court judges her employees? It is the court that provides oversight on politicians, not vice versa.

And Bennett defeating Hamas? He’s been a senior cabinet minister for 6 years now, what’s stopped him? He keeps making hotheaded statements about Gaza, but that’s a dime a dozen in Israeli politics. Does he want to be Security Minister? Lieberman was just there and resigned in frustration and failure, precisely over Gaza. As I said, desperation.

Yeah, I’m sure there are a lot of secular (and Orthodox!) teenage boys and soldiers who drool over Shaked’s pictures, but neither that nor various click-baits are quite the same as attracting and retaining over 150,000 votes through to election day in a dense field.

The right wing as a whole, headed by Likud, is still favored to win. But Bennett and Shaked, in an affront to their inflated and media-pampered egos, might find themselves at risk of elimination this time around.